Silencing "Fighting Bob”: The Attack on Antiwar Progressives During the First World War

Silencing "Fighting Bob” tells the story of the coordinated attack by the federal government on the progressive opponents of the First World War. As Eric Chester reminds us, the American people saw no reason for the United States to become directly involved in Europe’s conflict in 1917. President Woodrow Wilson, ignoring that fact, forced the United States to join with its allies in carrying the war to the bitter end: the strategic capitulation of Germany. To accomplish this, Wilson—notably, a Democrat—was convinced that harsh repression of dissent was necessary. Reexamining a wide range of archival sources from a new angle, Chester describes the rollout of this campaign of suppression, showing that the most radical opponents of the war were the first to come under attack, beginning with the imprisonment of members of the Industrial Workers of the World and the sentencing of left-wing socialists to long terms in prison. Chester reveals that, as soon as the radical Left was quashed, the federal government turned its attention to reformists committed to working within the system—that is, Progressives, as led by Senator “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, the Wisconsin Republican at the forefront of the Progressive movement.

What does it say that, although some of the first World War’s most ardent opponents were situated in the United States, few today recall that most Americans opposed the decision to enter the First World War? What can we learn from the fact that it was a Democrat who brought that antiwar movement down? As Chester demonstrates, history shows the struggle to uphold civil liberties can only succeed when everyone’s right to dissent is defended, no matter what their views and no matter who holds power. Chester documents the process by which a Democrat who viewed himself as a reformer took down a Republican, along with the countless Progressives he counted among his allies—leaving a lasting legacy for the Democratic Party: the repression of the most potent Progressive forces in the United States.